


Requiem for a Dream

by atleastonce



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Not Beta Read, POV Third Person Limited, Post-War, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 22:39:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19119127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atleastonce/pseuds/atleastonce
Summary: She saw things in her dreams.





	Requiem for a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Heed the tags. You are solely responsible for what you consume.

She saw things in her dreams.

A curious thing, really. She didn’t see much of anything these days, her nights mercifully shrouded in darkness and her mind adrift from the cocktail of potions they prescribed her.

Everything was a blur.

So she hadn’t known what to make of them at first; what to do about the pale and gaunt faces that looked right back at hers in the dreams. She wondered if this was what she looked like deep inside, emaciated and thin. Dead.

She wouldn’t put it past her own imagination to come up with something like this. After all, her mind wasn’t a good place. It hadn’t been for some time.

Not since she had fallen ill.

Not since her friends had been killed.

Not since, _since—_

Her mind drifted, the thoughts spreading out like blood in open water. She let it go, hoping that a shark was not too far away. If it devoured her, if it sunk its teeth into her brain and finished what her mind couldn’t, she’d find freedom at last.

But that was too much to ask. There was no shark here in this empty, white room. It was only her and the straps holding her down, the only means to prevent her fingers from clawing at her face.

“Hermione...”

She let out a slow breath but did nothing to acknowledge the presence that had spoken. It always came when she least expected it, when she least wanted it to.

_Right when she was nearing her limit, mind about to crack open like a dam._

“Come on, I know you heard me.”

She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t so much as breathe when something cold pressed along the side of her left brow. It was always the same. A touch here. A touch there. Enough, always, to let her know that it was here and that it was not leaving.

“How long do you plan to hide away in your fragmented little mind, hm?” The drawl was enough to make her skin crawl, to remind her of gunmetal silver, of the acrid smell of blood, and of the bitter taste of vomit in the back of her throat. The memories were bubbling in the back of her mind. She could feel it. Clawing.

It itched. Like a festering pustule, it demanded to be scratched.

She held on for dear life. She would hold on for however long it took.

It couldn’t get her as long as she pretended, walled herself up to the stimulus. It wasn’t real.

_None of this was._

The heavy silence that followed was like white noise. Hermione let herself sink into it, body falling back into the lull she’d been floating in before. She willed her body to relax, her senses to ignore the burning gaze trailing over the plains of her cheekbones.

_Just go away. Just go—_

“Closing yourself off won’t save him.”

A hand was in her’s in an instant, hot and real. Her senses narrowed to that touch, her heart stuttering in her chest.

Those fingers threaded through hers, and Hermione’s stomach twisted. The slide of those nails were enough to make her spine tingle. Shudder.

This was new.

Her mouth went dry when a low laugh cut through the white noise of her breathing, the sound of rushing blood trailing right after, hot on the heels of its laughter.

_No._

This wasn’t right _._

“Open your eyes, Hermione.”

A whimper erupted from her throat, her hand jerking in the leather bindings for freedom. To escape. But the hand would not let her go, would not set her free. The laughter rumbled on, amused and delighted. As if it was happy that she was scared, as if it was—

The laughter cut off as quickly as it had come. The silence that followed did nothing to quell the anxious thrum now twisting through her senses, sinking from the pit of her belly and lower still, until it finally stopped at her toes.

“ _P-please Hermione._ ”

Hermione froze. It was like she’d been doused in an ice bath, her eyes shooting open without conscious thought.

 _That voice_ , she thought. _It couldn’t be._

“Draco?”

The face staring back at her was something out of a dream.

He looked—

He looked _good._

There was no trace of blood, no torn shirts or purpling bruises. His skin was pristine. A perfect canvas to paint the colours of the universe into his cheeks. She devoured him with her gaze, stripping him layer after layer, searching for faults.

But there were none.

Her eyes burned, refusing to blink lest she lose this moment. This couldn’t possibly be real, but what if it was? What if she lost him forever again? What if this was the last time, the final moment? What if—

“Shhh, it’s okay.”

His voice threatened to upend her.

It wasn’t okay. It never would be. _She_ never would be. Strapped to a bed, trapped in a room with no windows, how could any of this be okay? No one ever came to see her. All she had were the healers that came in when she had a lucid period.

She was alone in this world. Everything was gone. Her friends, her parents, and her bloody mind were dust in the wind.

Draco’s eyes appraised her, from the messy curls on her head down to the crumpled white hospital gown she wore. He didn’t say a word as he did, his grip on her hand gentle but firm. Suffocating.

She didn’t know how long they remained this way: Draco’s heavy stare on her and her’s on him. Was it moments? Hours? Decades? It was hard to tell. There was no window to read the time in the stars, no sun to divine from the shadows the precise hour.

Nevertheless, the moment couldn’t last forever. She couldn’t let it drag on even if she wanted it to.

Draco was dead.

_I saw him die._

She needed to confirm it, to do _something._

“You’re not here.”

Draco acted as if he hadn’t heard her, his face a careful mask of nothing. A swell of unease blossomed in her stomach, like a scream in an empty field.

_That’s...no, that wasn’t what I expected._

“Am I?”

Hermione let out a low breath, gasping when the hand still in hers squeezed until she thought her bones might splinter, until she couldn’t keep still, struggling to get out of his brutal grip.

“L-let go.”

_It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!_

He let her go, his hand now trailing the lightest touches on her knuckles. A rush of relief flooded her, her body collapsing into the bed, drained. Hermione didn’t move for some time, the relief giving way to fear the longer she spent lying there.  

He was looking at her, but he also wasn’t. Like he could look right through her, tear apart the flaps of her chest and see just what made her tick.

_But he’s never done this before, never do this to me._

The throbbing in her hand was another brutal reminder of just how wrong this was.

 _This isn’t him. It couldn’t be_.

Draco would never hurt her. He loved her, almost to the point of pain, to the point of death. He was her confidante in life, her best friend when Harry and Ron couldn’t be there for her.

She didn’t understand.

“Go on.”

Hermione paused, uncertain. Go on with that?

Draco let out an exasperated sigh before levering her with an impatient look.

“Ask me whatever you like. I’m sure you’re curious.”

Hermione swallowed, befuddled by the way he was talking, at the way he was _behaving_. It was like she was talking to someone wearing Draco’s skin, as if he’d become someone else entirely.

The thought was enough to send a thrill of terror down her spine, to make her breaths go shallow.

_What if this wasn’t Draco?_

The face looking back at her, pretty and pale, was the same one she’d kiss before leaving for work all those weeks ago. It wasn’t possible that this was someone else. She was going mad, had to be.

_But he would never hurt you, Hermione. Never._

Hermione steeled herself, her resolve hardening.

_This wasn’t Draco._

_This was someone else. An imposter._

“What have you done to him!” Hermione shouted, body jerking to tear herself out of the straps but her efforts were useless. She recognised that it wouldn’t amount to anything. Of course, it wouldn’t. There was no getting out of here unless she was let go. Unless she could phase through walls, she wasn’t going anywhere but—

“You’re not Draco,” Hermione yelled out when he began to laugh this time. His face twisted into something monstrous, foreign. She reared back, desperate to put as much space between them when he shot forward. His hands came down on either side of her head as he crowded her into the bed.

“Who are you?” Hermione breathed out at the same time Draco’s lips curved into a grin, his face coming closer until all Hermione could breathe, could see, was Draco’s grinning face. His expression was too wide, too indulgent. It sickened her.

“You.”

Hermione couldn’t breathe. Her breaths were too shallow, short. There wasn’t enough air in the room to feed her lungs.

“I am what you want most.”

She turned her head away, unable to bear looking at him any longer. A whimper was all she could muster through her collapsing lungs.

“I am what you least deserve.”

She wanted to cover up her ears. She didn’t want to listen anymore. She didn’t. This wasn’t Draco, this was the voice. The monster that rattled at the bars of its cell, desperate to take a bite.

_This isn’t real._

“Stop it,” Hermione said, sealing her eyes shut when Draco’s warm breaths puffed against her ear. The contact burned her with each exhale.

“Did you think you could hide from yourself?” His voice was soft despite the way his tongue carved her out. Cut her open.

“That your own demons wouldn’t come knocking on your door?”

Hermione gasped when he gripped her by her chin and turned her head back, her eyes falling open against her better judgment.

She barely felt the burn of her own tears at the corners of her eyes. Not when she thought she might be sick, stomach threatening to empty out.

_God help me._

“Poor, poor little _mudblood.”_

Draco’s face was mangled beyond recognition. His left eye had been gouged out, an empty socket of nothing just centimetres from her own face. His mouth was bloodied, teeth broken or missing from his handsome grin. Hermione didn’t dare glance lower, couldn’t bring herself to.

She didn’t know what she might find if she did.

“This is your fault, you know,” he drawled, his matter-of-fact tone enough to sting. “I never would have died if it hadn’t been for you.” The sight of his flesh tearing with each murmured word was enough to make her gag.

_No._

She tried to force her head away, to fight off his grip on her jaw. He didn’t budge an inch.

“Look at me, Hermione.”

Her insides were on fire. Everything was on fire. Her skin felt like they were blistering, sliding right off of her bones.

_No. No. No. No._

“This is your punishment.”

* * *

 

“Are you sure she is going to be okay?”

Harry couldn’t bear the sight of her. Ever since the accident, Hermione hadn’t been the same.

She didn’t see them, didn’t recognise them. It was like she’d become a different person, from one moment to the next.

No one could explain it. No healer thus far had managed to decrypt the mystery.

“Positive,” Draco said, his eyes sliding away from Harry’s face to the girl sleeping just a short distance away. “This is the best hospital money could buy.”

A statement Harry never imagined would come out of Draco’s mouth.

It hadn’t made sense. Still didn’t, in many respects. Draco and Hermione had never been particularly close. Their differences had always overborne their similarities. But ever since she had spiraled into madness, Draco had become a fixture in her life.

Paying for her medical expenses and care, Draco had shown a side of him that no one had ever seen before. The number of times he’d walked in to see Draco’s hand in hers, playing with her fingers, were too many to count. This affection was bizarre. It almost seemed as if Draco felt indebted to her somehow, was making up for what could have been had he removed his head from his arse before it’d been too late.

Harry couldn’t be sure. Even now, after months of this, he still couldn’t quite pin Draco down.

“She’s in good hands,” Draco murmured after a beat, his eyes sliding away from Hermione’s sleeping body to pin Harry with an expression Harry had never seen before.

At least, it wasn’t something Harry had ever seen Draco wear while talking about Hermione. It was almost happiness.

“They’ll take good care of her.”

_Almost._


End file.
